Owning your own home

I wouldn't hesitate to tidy up BT copper that isn't in use at the moment.

I mean no, it's very unsecured from passing thieves with ladders. I imagine a kind passer by might then roll up what was left and attach it to the bottom of the pole to help future Openreach engineers and prevent trip hazards.

👍🏻

They removed ours when our fibre line was installed, from what I can tell it's down to whether the engineer can be arsed.

Something like this happened on my house, the line must have been cut by vandals who climbed scaffolding when the front of the house was being painted. They left about 5 foot which dangled from the top of the pole for a few years.

One time a long line broke and was lying in the street, BT came and cleared it up after a phone call. Accidents happen.

Does anyone have any helpful advice on how to choose a surveyor for a freehold property purchase? House was built around 1900 and is in Derbyshire.

We will ask some friends for local recommendations of people they previously used and have good experiences with. Other than personal recommendations and obviously cost at the other factors I should consider before deciding on a surveyor?

I used the RICS website to find someone local who was accredited and worked under their own name, hoping they’d more likely be familiar with any potential hyper-local issues that could effect the house.

Similar aged house for us, a bit further north - the Haynes ‘Victorian House Manual’ is quite a handy guide (covers Edwardian stuff too).

Tbh, for what a homebuyers report covers, in hindsight I feel like it’s much of a muchness and doesn’t really matter that much who you go with - a lot of it is obvious stuff, and then a lot is caveated to hell and back with ‘this should be investigated by a specialist in X’.

Very interesting to know. Thank you!

I haven't bought loads of houses but my attitude to surveys is "yeah but so so what?"

If it's a Victorian era or older house it will have a shit load of things wrong with it. The kind of faults that would make a deal fall through tend to be fairly obvious, and if so either you are getting the place cheap or it has some unique characteristic that you really want.

I've had two non money pits and one money pit, so far. Surveys didn't really move things either way.

Wanna go halves ?

dibs the crocs if a size 8

Missed this so bit late.
Similar situation. SOMEONE simple climbed up the front of our house and cut the damn thing off leaving it dangling down the pole it was left attached to.
Not sure if asshole move as neighbour mentioned it then tidied it up themselves (I assumed BT would sort promptly or it was a non issue).

Sounds like the same vandals that did mine.

I haven't bought loads of houses but my attitude to surveys is "yeah but so so what?"

I've had two non money pits and one money pit, so far. Surveys didn't really move things either way.

I'd agree - I work somewhat within this industry and so am aware at how limited they can be. I couldn't see any visible cracks or anything obviously wrong when we bought, so went for the bank's desktop/automated valuation and asked a builder mate to have a look around on the second viewing.

After lying to their extremely frustrating automated telephone triage service, which basically said contact your ISP (I don't have one for that line, it's disused!) I managed to speak to a real person who said I have to email them a photo and some info including why I want it moved. I suspect this may result in getting charged.

It would. They think you want to move (or shift) your NTE when actually what you want to do is get rid of it altogether. It is your property and you can do what you want, but the connection between your property and the cabinet isn't, so leave that be. They only need to get involved if you want the thing to work. If you don't, just kick it off the wall and swing it around your head like a lasso. It is excellent fun.

Can’t reply to my own post but have finally exchanged contracts today. Chain free at both ends with no funny searches or exceptional requests from either us or the vendor and still took from March 20th to get to exchange. At some point I’ll post about the woeful experience we’ve had with our own solicitor but for now I’m just relieved.

Looking forward to taking the dog over to hunt out the prawns the seller has no doubt sewn into the curtains by now..

Having been there myself (august to january with 2 aborted sales/purchases before that plus the obligatory solicitor shithousery) I congratulate you on this momentous occasion.

Glad it's not just me, same deal, both chain free, nothing complicated, offer made mid April, hoping to exchange in next two weeks, doing my head in

Congrats on getting it over the line

woeful experience we’ve had with our own solicitor

At this point, I just take that as read with any sale/purchase.

At this point, I just take that as read with any sale/purchase.

It seems like it would take so little to be the one of the best conveyancing solicitors - just answering phones and responding as promised would probably do it.

Not enough money in it to bother

This. Good customer service is not something that gets them any more money, or the lack of it won't see them sanctioned. The wording by the ombudsman is vague enough that it's difficult to counter. Phrases like "in a timely fashion" or some such subjective bollocks. How can you, as a lay person, easily prove that the searches should take X amount of time? Or when have you ever seen an SLA in a solicitor's quote? I imagine asking for one would get you nowhere. Although, if I ever go through the process again, I'd be asking them to outline ahead of time what they consider reasonable response times and try to hold them to it. It will definitely not work, but I'm enough of a dick to not mind making their life annoying about it.

That’s me triggered considering the amount of money we paid them and the amount of unpaid work I did doing their job correcting all their mistakes and omissions.
Not to mention the extra costs that came about due to their lack attention to detail which amounted to several hundred pounds.

About 4 months after we completed on our first purchase our conveyancer sent an amended invoice saying we still owed them £1.13.

Mind boggling.

But then they'd probably have to charge more to make up for the reduced workload they could take on.

Saying that, I was in the lucky position of both my lawyer and the one I was buying from were very good in terms of getting back to me quickly (not quite so good the one who was buying my place who started asking pointless questions as a cover for their client preparing to pull out but you can't have everything).